


Baby, You Should Stick Around

by orphan_account



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, M/M, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21536827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Eddie’s been through a lot the past year, he lost his wife, his son went through a serious trauma, and now his best friend has just tried to kill himself.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Bobby Nash, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 19
Kudos: 513





	Baby, You Should Stick Around

**Author's Note:**

> This can be seen as Buddie as friends or more, or somewhere inbetween, depending on you.

He stands outside the hospital room with trepidation, and with his heart beating wildly in his chest, threatening to explode. To leap out. He can’t really seem to fathom how this happened or why he’s even here. One second he’s at the park with Christopher waiting for Buck, waiting, and waiting, the next he’s getting a phone call from a frantic Maddie. She’s hysterical and Eddie can’t blame her. He almost was too, but then Christopher was looking at him with those big innocent eyes and he had to keep it together, for him if nothing else. He didn’t tell him what happened. Not really.

“Eddie?” Bobby asks, his footfalls heavy as he comes up toward Eddie who stares through the windows in the room, revealing Buck’s almost sleep like form. He’s hooked up to machines, and wires. He looks so small and lost. Eddie wants to reach out to him, grab hold, and bring him back from whenever he’s gone. But he can’t.

“Hey.” Eddie says to Bobby, unsure of what else he can say. Bobby’s eyes are red and he’s definitely been crying. There’s a tense silence between them and Eddie wants to scream. To yell. To do something. He can’t. He’s stuck, unable to move until the only words he manages to get out are, “How did this happen? I thought he was- I…”

“We all did.” Bobby says, his voice catching on the words.

Eddie can’t find it in himself to go inside.

~

Apparently Buck had a lot of medication stored up in his place. He kept it in his drawer, in the desk he never used by his bed. Various prescriptions, some for the physical and others for the mental. Eddie didn’t know Buck was seeing a psychiatrist, no one did, not even Maddie, but after what happened no secrets get kept. Maybe that’s how it should have been before. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened, but that doesn’t do any good to be thinking about What If’s. It’s still hard not to though, to not thinking about what he and everyone else could have done differently.

Eddie knew he was struggling, but he thought he was getting better, and getting through it. He knows the job means a lot to him, but it’s not the end of the world that he doesn’t have it anymore. There are so many more and other things he can do with his life. Eddie tried to tell him, he tried- Didn’t he?

Buck took them all. It must have been over a hundred pills, and yet he survived. He lived, except he’s hooked up to a machine that breathes for him, and every time Eddie goes in there he looks so inhuman. He looks like he’s half a robot. Eddie can’t take it. His eyes shut and unresponsive, his lips down, pulled open by the tube. His hands bruised and needled to hell and back. Sometimes a vein would collapse and they’d have to find another one. His hair is longer and dishevelled but he’s bathed daily. The nurses trained to get around the chords and electrodes. Things keeping him alive and telling everyone how his heart and pressure are doing. It’s too much. Eddie can’t go in. He watches it all from outside, from the window. Maddie hasn’t left his side once. Eddie admires that. He can’t stay like that, Christopher needs him, and it’s too damn hard anyway. Even if it is selfish.

He’s at home when he gets the call. He answers it with shaking figures, afraid of the worst and afraid for the best. “Hello?”

“ _He’s awake._ ” Chimney’s voice is relieved.

“He’s awake?” Eddie echoes, not really believing what Chimney is telling him.

“ _He’s awake._ ” Chimney confirms once again. “ _They’re checking- checking for brain damage but he seemed to recognize Maddie. It’s a good sign, Eddie._ ”

Eddie nods into the phone and thanks him for calling him. He doesn’t say anything about going to visit, and Chimney doesn’t question it or him. He lets him go and Eddie is left holding a phone as his chest heaves. Christopher isn’t here, he’s at school, and for that Eddie is eternally grateful because he couldn’t stop the tears even if he wanted to. They come and they come. Relief and still raw fear clawing at his heart.

~

Eddie walks up to the door, afraid, so very afraid, but then he’s knocking and they all look up to him. Maddie, Chimney, Bobby, and- and Buck. He still has the tube in his mouth but his body is sat up, tired eyes open and recognizing, looking- alive. He tries to smile, or say something around the tubes breathing for him as he looks to Eddie and Eddie just about loses it again. All the anger that started to build as he drove here, anger about how Buck could have done this to him and Christopher, now evaporating as he sees him smiling. As he sees his best friend alive. Alive and here.

“We’re going to get a coffee from downstairs.” Maddie says to Buck, not even bothering to ask anyone else. “We’ll be back soon.”

She pushes his hair back much like a mother would and kisses him on his forehead before her and the others make their way out of the room, leaving him alone with Eddie. Giving them a moment. It takes Eddie many more before he can finally step inside Buck’s room. Step towards him and to him. He sits on the chair Maddie previously occupied and they just stare. Stare at one another. Neither knowing what to say, even though Buck can’t say anything as is, he does have a small notebook in hand, probably for the purpose of talking alone. But he doesn’t use it. He seems as lost as Eddie.

“I-” Eddie starts, but stops himself, before he shakes his head, that anger back now. “How could you?”

The words are supposed to be harsh, but they instead come out broken. Buck looks regretful, and Eddie’s not sure if it’s for what he did or for what he did to Eddie and everyone else. Eddie has never been one to cry much, or to show much of any emotion but then the tears are coming, and they keep coming. Ever since Buck- He can’t help it. He can’t. He just can’t.

Buck reaches up with the hand that’s not currently full of needles and reaches out for Eddie. He finds Buck’s hand in his hair, gentle but unsteady. He guides Eddie toward him, his face being pushed into Buck’s chest. Eddie sort of lets go. He rests his head there and listens. Listens to the breaths that are still not entirely there but not gone either. They get stronger and stronger, and Buck’s hand in his hair, running through it in comfort reiterates that fact.

They stay like this for a very long time, and when the others get back they don’t enter. They just let them be.


End file.
